Re: Near miss

Re: Near miss

The clip showed something superficially similar, but it was far less dangerous being on a low speed road.

Re: Near miss

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 1:45 am

by Pontoneer

I too had a near thing a week ago , rather than type it all out again , below is a copy/paste of what I posted on one of my car club forums last Monday .

I came close to being rear ended yesterday ; It would have been just typical as I had just bought a little Polo as a run-around since my two Mercs are currently off the road ( the SL needs a few jobs doing before going back on the road for the summer , and I was waiting for the better weather before starting , and my 190 developed a problem with the diff , and has been in bits on the drive for about three weeks now since weather prevented work progressing any further ) .

Anyway , I had been out in my little car , which I'd had all of three days , and returning home , my house is on the left with an unsighted side road immediately before it . I was second in a line of cars , behind a red Audi , who signalled left to turn into the road just before my house , and since I was going to pull in just beyond the junction , I had slowed down as well .

Just as Mr Audi started to turn into the side road , he was confronted by a huge lorry coming out of the junction , taking up most of the width of the road , and he stopped dead . I stood on my brakes and stopped without hitting him , and the gentleman behind me managed to stop without hitting me . Unfortunately , the three or four vehicles behind weren't so lucky and there was a pile up . The chap behind me was rear ended by the car behind , which was shunted into him by a Renault , and it in turn had its back end well caved in by the Mitsubishi L200 that was following .

Since I was 30 ft from my parking space , I parked my car and went back to help . The old chap who had managed to stop without hitting me was out of his car and clearly in shock , shaking all over , he asked me to get his walking stick , which I did . I then offered to move his car onto the pavement in front of my house , out of the way of traffic , which he accepted .

Mr Audi , who hadn't hit anything nor been hit , drove off , as did the black car which had rear ended the old chap ( something not right , no insurance , licence , MOT ?? - hence fled the scene ! ) .

As luck would have it , a police van came along a couple of minutes later and the two cops started taking details . We asked the old chap , who was 89 , if he'd like an ambulance as he seemed to be badly in shock , but he was having none of it , but ended coming into my house for a cup of tea . After giving my details and an account of what happened to the WPC , I went into the house to see how the old gentleman was , and left the rest to sort themselves out .

The old chap was most concerned that he was late for visiting his wife in hospital , where his daughter was due to meet him , but despite trying repeatedly to phone the daughter , we couldn't reach her , nor by phoning the hospital and being put through to the ward , where the nurses told us the daughter wasn't there . It turned out he was ex-army and punctuality was everything to him .

In the end , I drove the old gent down to the hospital , and went in to look for the daughter . She wasn't there , but the nurses had a mobile contact , which wasn't the number the old chap had given us . It turned out she had gone looking for her dad and was at his home , so we kept him there until she arrived , at which point I left , telling the daughter her dad's car was at my house , safely parked up and that , if she wanted , I'd drive it back to his house once they were finished visiting - which is what we did .

Of course , some of the drivers in the crash were blaming the Audi for stopping suddenly in the road , but as I commented to the police , he couldn't have done anything else as he met the lorry in the mouth of the junction , and the fault was that of those who weren't able to stop safely when the cars in front stopped - with which they agreed .

I had intended working on the 190 that afternoon , but got nothing done at all ...